Domestic Private Sector Participation (DPSP)

Globally, 748 million people do not have access to improved drinking water sources and 2.5 billion people lack access to improved sanitation. To improve access to improved water and sanitation, developing country governments are increasingly looking to the domestic private sector because the public sector alone lacks the resources and capacity to provide universal access to water and sanitation. Our interest in the domestic private sector is because the people outside from public service coverage turn to self-supply or alternative sources. For these people, the entities assisting them are local private sector. These domestic private sector actors play an important role in providing wider and more cost-effective access, particularly to the poorest in in peri-urban, small towns, and rural areas. WSP’s DPSP works to better understand and further assist the domestic private sector participants to maximize the impact of their involvement.

To stimulate domestic private sector participation, the Water and Sanitation Program: